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Author Topic: The lying media (WorldWatch column)
WntrMute
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I'd like to thank OSC for trying to further disseminate the truth that the media is actively withholding from the public they supposedly serve. It is increasingly obvious that it is not the public nor the truth that they serve but rather a narrow ideologically driven agenda.

OSC's column is here.
Read it all, because it is good. And it has the benefit of actually being based on these seldom-heard-of-things you'll hardly ever get from CNN, CBS, or NBC called FACTS. It's a novel concept, and hopefully it will catch on.

I found the link above at this post which I also tend to agree with.

Enjoy.

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Pelegius
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I am sure Murdoch always uses FACTS, not being subject to partisan bias. After all, only EVIL LIBERAL TERRORIST-LOVING SCUMBAGS LIKE EMIL KIRJAS are biased. GOD FEARING AMERICANS® know the TRUTH, which is that LIBERALS ARE EVIL!!!!!!!
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King of Men
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Not that I would dream of criticising, but surely comrade OSC, by publishing these columns, is himself a part of 'the media'? In other words, you should take a leaf from the man's column, and not criticise the whole industry, but the corrupt and dishonest parts of it.

It is somewhat interesting to see the opposite directions Norwegian and American newspapers have taken. (I am going to ignore TV and radio, because I neither watch nor listen, and in any case TV was a state monopoly in Norway for so long that the cases are anything but comparable.) There was a time when newspapers in Norway were unabashedly party organs : The Labour party had its newspaper, the Communists had theirs, and the Conservatives had theirs. But along with the loosening up of state controls on the economy, and the Labour party's loss of its government monopoly, came a very considerable weakening of the old party ties.

Certainly, bias remains; but it is now much weaker, and not drawn along strictly party lines. Perhaps this merely reflects the end of the great ideological debates in Norwegian politics; there is now an essential consensus among the parties (reflecting also, I think, the population as a whole) on welfare capitalism, not recklessly spending the oil money, and in general a middle way between the command economy of the postwar years, and total laissez-faire capitalism.

American newspapers, on the other hand, seem to have gone from reasonably neutral purveyors of news, to explicitly ideological organisations - I might almost say, propaganda mouthpieces. (And on top of that, the quality of the discourse is extremely simplistic; it appears that everything needs to be explained to the absolutely dullest spoon in the drawer. OSC is an honourable exception in this regard; I rarely agree with the man, but at least he doesn't treat his reader as a rather dull child.)

I find this rather odd; you would intuitively expect the opposite situation, as indeed was the case in the fifties and sixties. But it is the capitalist, laissez-faire society that has the ideological newspapers, while the welfare state has fairly neutral ones. (I realise you're having to take my word for this, though Aftenposten does a reasonable 'news in English' page; but I do read a considerable amount of newspapers, both in Norwegian and English.)

I wonder if it could be an effect of reasonably homogenous, consensus societies? Most citizens of Norway are reasonably well satisfied with the current system; and this consensus is reflected in the parties. Sure, the Conservatives want less taxes and more defenses; the Labour Party wants more social spending; the Christian Democrats want more kindergartens; and the Progress Party want fewer immigrants; but these are differences of detail. Nobody campaigns for major structural changes to the welfare system anymore; it is a matter of moving a few millions from this post to that one. There is no real division over foreign policy - apart from aid to developing countries, the onlyy real issue is the Barents Sea, and everybody agrees that the Russians should damn well stay out. [Big Grin] Hence there is no real need for explicitly party newspapers.

The US, on the other hand, seems a nation rather badly divided. I would imagine that the fifties were fairly monolithic in comparison : Everybody agreed that Commies were bad, capitalism was the way to go, welfare should be a safety net at most, and most people would expect to get married and have children. Again, then, what was the need for propaganda in newspapers? But let a divisive issue like Vietnam and the civil rights struggle come along, ah, then things change.


I'm not sure I'm putting this thesis very well. Summed up : I am proposing that bias in newspapers is a measure of the divisions in a nation, and trying to use the US and Norway, the two nations I'm at all familiar with, as test cases. If anyone could chime in with newspapers from another nation, I would be most interested. Or perhaps my understanding of American newspapers in the fifties is faulty? Those of you who lived then, perhaps you could correct me.

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Aerto
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quote:
Originally posted by Pelegius:
I am sure Murdoch always uses FACTS, not being subject to partisan bias. After all, only EVIL LIBERAL TERRORIST-LOVING SCUMBAGS LIKE EMIL KIRJAS are biased. GOD FEARING AMERICANS® know the TRUTH, which is that LIBERALS ARE EVIL!!!!!!!

Somebody needs to get off the uppers. I don't recall anybody say Fox was as pure as the newly fallen snow. I think the point is that all media is now self-serving, which it may have always been.
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tern
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I think that the media has always been self serving - see Upton Sinclair, and "yellow journalism".

The media has traditionally shielded itself behind a claim of impartiality, but I believe that there have been two developments which have worsened the media. First, there has been a change in journalism schools from teaching future journalists to seek truth to deciding that there is no truth, and it is the responsibility of the journalist to write the article in such a way that will bring about their notions of justice. This parallels the rise in judicial activism in law - it's the same basic forces, moving in law from formalism to "critical legal studies". Second, politics have become more polarized. This affects the media because they rarely tend to be in the middle, but are rather on the edges (usually the left edge, but there are a few on the right) and secondly, readers are more politically polarized and are therefore more inclined to see news as being slanted. One hilarious example is when the far far left (think Green Party or LaRouchies) start yammering about how the L.A. Times and the New York Times are biased conservatively.

So anyway, the problem is partly a matter of a real change in journalism and partly a matter of a change in perception among readers.

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Audeo
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The idea of a completely impartial media has always struck me as a bit naive. When I took government in high school (a class required for graduation) we were introduced to an idea of the media as the fourth branch of government. The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches have a fair amount of control over each other, but the media, by hiding by front of impartiality, is really given a lot of free reign. It has an immense amount of influence over the rest of the state, and the opinions of the people. As technology has improved, and it has become easier to disseminate information, the influence of the media, and the ability to conjure newstories has likewise appeared.

I don't think I agree with KoM that media partiality is a product of conflict, rather I think it more likely that internal dissent over major issues is more likely to reveal the ever-present media bias. If everybody agrees with everybody else, and the media is no exception to that agreement, then no one is going to go to much effort to investigate the subtle biases present in the stories. Compare that to the environment in America today, where there seem to be two diametrically opposed groups, one might even say two groups in one country who lack a common moral ground, and if both groups are large enough to be heard, it's going to become apparent that both parties newspapers aren't telling the truth. People usually assume that means that one side is 'right' and the other 'wrong,' naturally which is which depends on which party you agree with. The truth is that neither side is above hyperbole, subtly biased word choice, or outright faking and lying about important choices if they think that it would further their cause. Afterall, they're right, so what does it matter if the story isn't completely objective, what matters is furthering their particular worldview.

Unfortunately I don't think that calling them on it will change anything. Even the most objective observer brings unconscious biases to a story, it's just human nature. The best we seem to be able to do is try to read both sides, and hope that we can extrapolate the truth somewhere.

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Orson Scott Card
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Once again, it would be nice if the people who attack me bothered to see what I actually said before attacking. Where in the essay in question did I speak of Fox News as perfect? And since Murdoch is not involved in the day-to-day newsgathering, it really makes you sound kind of paranoid to refer to Fox with epithets like those you used, P. But if you actually watch Fox, you will not find anyone calling liberals "evil" except Hannity - who shares his show with an actual liberal, Alan Combes, who is MY favorite commentator on Fox. It is your apparent loathing of your opponents, not Fox's, that creates your really quite embarrassing kneejerk response to any criticism of the mainstream media.

Has Pelegius any example of his hated Fox News suppressing a story or selectively editing to give the impression that the evidence says the opposite of what it says? Has Fox been caught using a selectively edited film sequence and repeating false stories about what it depicts?

And KoM, while I specifically pointed out in my essay that it is by the media that we find out the misdoings of the media - the issue is WHO is lying (major, prestigious publications) and who is correcting them (obscure, niche publications that most people never hear of) - I think your overall point is well taken. But one thing leads to another ... that is, the consensus you're speaking of will always drift into bias, as it did in the U.S., where we USED to have partisan papers, clearly labeled, until the just-the-facts approach carried the day. The sad thing is how quickly the just-the-facts approach drifted into a just-the-facts-that-say-what-we-want-said-because-the-people-are-too-dumb-to-be-trusted-with-complicated-truth viewpoint, which is unchallenged because only people who see things in the establishment way can be hired by the major news outlets ...

UNTIL Fox News, by the deliberate choice of Rupert Murdoch, challenged that ideological monopoly. The mere existence of a news outlet that attempted to present both sides was viewed with such panic by the mainstream (i.e., Leftist) media that they had to vilify it - without evidence, without examples - as if it were Fox that presented only a single, slanted viewpoint.

Have you noticed that when I publish an essay with specific examples of lies by Leftist media in France and the U.S., the only answer is mere ridicule of Fox News, as if the idea of attempting to be fair and balanced were itself absurd, because everyone knows that Truth will always come out of somebody's consensus reality instead of out of the give-and-take of contrary views?

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King of Men
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quote:
And KoM, while I specifically pointed out in my essay that it is by the media that we find out the misdoings of the media - the issue is WHO is lying (major, prestigious publications) and who is correcting them (obscure, niche publications that most people never hear of)
Well, it remains to be seen, but it is possible that the Internet will change this. With the much smaller capital required to get your views out there - as indeed is proven by your columns; how many people would read them if they only appeared in your local newspaper? - it is possible that the best will emerge to the top by sheer word-of-mouth and people wanting something intelligent for a change. Paul Graham argues for such an effect in the linked essay; I hope he is right.


quote:
But one thing leads to another ... that is, the consensus you're speaking of will always drift into bias, as it did in the U.S., where we USED to have partisan papers, clearly labeled, until the just-the-facts approach carried the day.
I don't understand how this follows. Why shouldn't an industry manage to remain honest over a long period of time? Or, if you accept my thesis, why shouldn't a society remain fairly homogenous and consensual (in the sense of 'having consensus') over long periods? The US and managed this feat in the 19th and the first two-thirds of the twentieth; conversely, most of Europe pulled out of an area of great ideological schism - consider France in the thirties, never mind Germany - to an era where the discussion is mainly over details.
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TomDavidson
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quote:

But if you actually watch Fox, you will not find anyone calling liberals "evil" except Hannity - who shares his show with an actual liberal, Alan Combes, who is MY favorite commentator on Fox.

Um.
You misspelled the name of your favorite commentator on Fox. But that's not entirely surprising, as Colmes exists -- as far as I can tell -- to be a punching bag for everyone else on the network.

That said, I agree wholeheartedly with the rest of your piece. While I think your selection of targets ignores a few worse ones, I think it's undeniable that there are more than enough targets to go around. This kind of thing is absolutely pervasive, and it's one of the reasons I could no longer bear to remain a journalist; it's not even possible for unknowns to make critiques like this in the "mainstream" media unless they deliberately select their specific examples to appeal to a publisher's topical bias.

I agree with you on McCarthy, too -- and there's an interesting (IMO) observation to be made based on Ann Coulter's recent attempt to rehabilitate and defend his memory. McCarthy, she argues, was a great and willful man who did what had to be done, and was destroyed -- dragged down, even -- by jealous, fearful people who didn't understand the importance of his work. And, oh, yeah, he also lied a bit. But the core of her argument is that the lies don't matter as long as the end was noble and the means were effective.

What bothers me most about this sort of apologetic logic is that it's leaking into everything nowadays.

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Bob_Scopatz
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GENERAL DISCUSSION
I'd have to ask, what separates McCarthy from Coventino -- the prosecutor whose actions in the "Detroit Terror Cell" case are being probed by a grand jury?

More important than biased press is perversion of Justice in the name of some hysterical fear mongering. And yes, the press is powerful in forming public opinion, but being caught in repeated lies actually lessens their impact. Not so, the government.

I don't excuse the press in this case, but I would like it if the debate were about lying as a bad strategy all around. If the people lose faith in their leaders, and in the press, what is left?

Another question is what are the consequences?

When the media picked up and perpetuated that false story about Israel, did that cause more US soldiers to die? Were people rounded up and sent to torture chambers in foreign lands in order extract bogus confessions?

I'm glad there are ways to watchdog the media. And when they blow it, I expect people to get fired and the responsible news agencies to apologize. And then I expect them to lose viewers/subscribers and have to struggle for awhile to regain some trust (and audience share).

That's bad news for their investors.

When governments lie, people die. And when governments get lied to, and don't check it out, people die. And when we discount our own experts and go with what makes us most proud, or satisfies the lusts of the moment, people die.

That's why McCarthy was bad -- bad for the US regardless of his intentions. And it's why people like Coventino (if he's eventually found guilty of something) need to be ferreted out and punished.

I'm happy that in this case, our Justice Department has done the right thing, by the way.

SPECIFICS ABOUT OSC's ARTICLE and MEDIA BIAS
One might legitimately ask where the press was as this was all unfolding. Why weren't there people reporting the travesty that Coventino perpetrated?

Asleep at the switch, IMHO. And too wrapped up in trying to get advertising dollars.

I think the way we package news in this country practically guarantees that it is, at best, partial, and more probably unreliable.

Fox is not immune from that. None of them are.

As for coverage of the Middle East, the fear of reprisals and the need for access are legitimate concerns for a news organization. Unfortunately, they are handling the issues with extreme cowardice and the result is completely as expected.

If there's one thing I would've liked to see different in OSC's article, it'd be a discussion that would reduce the political overtones of the exposition of bias to show how it is rampant and a consequence of sloppy, lazy, and cowardly reporting overall.

As soon as it became a defense of the position that there IS a liberal bias in the media, I felt like the rest of it couldn't be anything but biased. Whether that's ultimately true or not, it set off my own warning alarms and made me less interested in reading the remainder. I think I've overdosed on THAT issue and was hoping for something that actually WAS balanced rather than finger-pointing about the issue. Maybe it's just me, but I don't care anymore. The media is biased. Yep. Now what?

I suppose if I force myself to read enough finger pointing, I'd emerge with a balanced picture. But I don't think it works that way. I tend to just get tired of it all and feel like there's no possible way to know what IS true without doing the research the the news organizations (and our government) SHOULD be doing.

Who the heck has time for THAT?

It just becomes an argument to distrust EVERYONE and hope that in the process of lying to us all the time, they don't do something that just makes the planet uninhabitable.

Talk about fostering a fatalistic attitude!


I would love to read what OSC would suggest that we all do to counter this. I have yet to hear someone give a thoughtful explanation of how people (the masses?) with limited time to devote to getting informed, can possibly accomplish that.


MORE MUSINGS ON McCARTHYISM and WHAT I REALLY THINK NEEDS TO HAPPEN
The biggest problem with McCarthyism wasn't the lies, I agree. It was the people's (and government's) hysterical response to them. The lies ceased to matter once the hysteria set in. I think that McCarthyism should be named for what it is -- deliberate fear mongering to whip up support for a particular point of view or for a particular drastic action.

The real question to ask, IMHO, is how many really dangerous people were identified and removed from positions where they could inflict that damage BECAUSE of McCarthy's tactics. Did those famous hearings ferret out more spies? Was it a cost-effective way to rid our government of Communist infiltrators? Or...did we all run around immersed in paranoia for awhile and ruin a bunch of people's careers with little else to show for the effort?

Self-correcting mechanisms are better. If the press rats itself out...eventually... and tries to set the record straight, that's at least better than launching a paranoid witch hunt, IMHO. If the government can do the same (as the Coventino issue in the Justice Department serves as an example) isn't that better than having the people just learn to distrust their own institutions?

How do we make SURE that happens?

I think there's an answer:

1) Make truthful goverment THE priority.
2) Make sure that no-matter what the lie, the press will uncover it. Strike fear into the hearts of lying politicians and government officials.
3) Vote with our wallets on the press issue. A media outlet caught in a lie should dry up and blow away as the public simply abandons it. The bigger the lie, the more customers they should lose.

If that doesn't fix the problem, then we probably have no hope of ever fixing it. At least not without first eliminating our democracy.

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joeyconrad
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OSC: "Has Pelegius any example of his hated Fox News suppressing a story or selectively editing to give the impression that the evidence says the opposite of what it says?"

There's no doubt there are agendas on both sides. The most egregious recent example might be Rather's acceptance of the supposed documentation of GW's National Guard absences.

But over on Fox, in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina, I saw a story on O'Reilly that really turned my stomach. As we all remember the government was getting a lot of flack over the response, and the conditions in the Astrodome in convention center.

O'Reilly interviewed a black couple outside (I believe) the Astrodome. They were not very articulate, and came across as ignorant and angry. Their main complaint was that there was no hot food. And O'Reilly skillfully egged them on, making them look even worse with questions like "So you've been fed, but haven't had any hot food?" To which they assented. He didn't ask any questions about what had happened to them during the hurricane or anything else about the shelter.

It certainly looked like the two were chosen to look bad and that complaints about the shelters were overblown. But instead of choosing someone articulate and asking direct questions to make his point, he manipulated a pair of inarticulate people. No matter what type of food that couple had, they were understandably agitated by their ordeal and quick to outrage.

And it just tapped into the worst stereotypes of ignorant, poor blacks.

It was ridiculous and transparent. But I was at a laundromat at the time and another person who was watching fell for the spiel hook, line and sinker, getting outraged at the "ungrateful" pair.

This sort of thing happens on both sides, sometimes more artfully, sometimes this crass (honestly, you just had to see it).

Now, none of this parallels the rigged video OSC wrote about (and thank you, I look forward to reading more on it). But some would argue the rescue of Jessica Lynch, film crew in tow, was staged.(http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-05-28-lynch-rescue_x.htm)
Not to the same degree of course. Lynch was a real soldier in hostile territory. The footage, even if staged, was intended as inspirational and uplifting, not meant to incite violence (although one could argue bolstering support for an ongoing war is indirectly inciting violence).

But I just don't know.
I don't know if as a people we'll ever be united like we were on Sept 12.
And like I wrote in another post yesterday, I had a real sinking feeling when I heard the story that the President went to Nebraska because of threats against Air Force One by a caller using secret code words.
I've been leery of a lot of it since then.

And I think the genuine "cynical realism" of which OSC spoke might be the reality that we were vulnerable and malleable in the aftermath of 9/11, and wouldn't question our leaders too much when presented with a war to elimate WMD. Even if that wasn't really its primary objective.

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Pelegius
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When people, particularly in the U.S., talk about the media, and how they are biased, they seem to always be speaking of television. Am I the only one who reads the international papers? Surely not.

"No one reads the papers any more
They are nothing more than lectures on the war."
John Stewart and Buffy Ford in "Signals through the Glass."

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Chris Bridges
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Newspapers have their own problems. Newspaper revenue is way down and sinking as readers migrate to TV and the Internet for more immediate, flashier coverage and newspaper are responding with two main directives:

Get more readers, however you do it, and Do it cheap and with less people.

Less investigative journalism. Less fact-checking. More spinning towards what readers want to read.

Sadly, relevancy doesn't seem to be marketable.

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tern
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quote:
When the media picked up and perpetuated that false story about Israel, did that cause more US soldiers to die?
No, not US soldiers, but a whole lot of innocent Israelis. They matter too.

Another example is the whole "peeing on the Koran" story that turned out to be a big exaggeration. People died because of that one, too.

The media does kill people and should be held responsible.

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Bob_Scopatz
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You're absolutely right about holding them accountable. I think that civil lawsuits should be filed if someone can successfully trace Israeli deaths to the aftermath of that report.
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Orincoro
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The sad thing is how quickly the just-the-facts approach drifted into a just-the-facts-that-say-what-we-want-said-because-the-people-are-too-dumb-to-be-trusted-with-complicated-truth viewpoint, which is unchallenged because only people who see things in the establishment way can be hired by the major news outlets ...

-OSC

Bravo, there's nothing inherently "wrong" about partisanship in any publication, as long as it is CLEAR and known. Publishing a partisan opinion or attempting to sway the public to your ideology by presenting "facts" in a calculated and selective manner is fine- Michael Moore and many others do it all the time, but unlike MM, many do it under the disguise of "JUST THE FACTS FOLKS." MM may even say "just the facts," but his intention is made (hopefully) very clear.

We cannot now gauge the intention of the media or of many authors, pundits or public officials because they all couch their observations, opinions, conclusions and actions in the "just the facts" department.

If we were to selectively write a history to no end but generating hopeless confusion for everyone about everything, then we could easily include a one page summary of the life of Adolf Hitler. In that page we could mention his various civic achievements, his family success, his skills at leadership, his power of speech, his perserverence in the face of incredible opposition, etc. We could entirely leave out the wanton slaughter of Millions of people from all over europe and the rest of the world, and focus on his work at revitalizing the German economy, not mentioning its reliance on slave labor or a state of total and absolute hatemongering frenzy.

This is the power of the media, that we have been convinced that we are given "the facts," and that the "the facts" means "ALL the Facts," not "some" of the facts.

I am willing to attribute 90 percent of the media's inneptitude to pure stupidity: bad researchers, no researchers, poor sources, no sources, tiredness even, and innability to comprehend the nature of many complex situations all at once... etc. If anyone needs further convincing of the hopeless innability of the news to get virtually ANYTHING even remotely right and complete, simply attend any public event, inform yourself of the details of the situation, and then read about it in the paper the next day; the details will ussually seem incomplete or simply wrong.

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Bob_Scopatz
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I disagree about the ineptitude. The reporters I've met are shockingly intelligent. Maybe the business end of things encourages sloppiness, but as a class I think reporters are pretty intelligent and they can fairly dogged in pursuing a story.
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TomDavidson
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I recall doing a piece on Hindu holidays for a local paper. The editor, needing some space, cut it drastically -- and didn't call me about the cuts. When I opened the paper that weekend, I was aghast to discover that my description of a holiday celebrating Vishnu's victory over several demons had been hacked down to something like "celebrating the destruction of the demon Vishnu."

To put this in perspective, imagine if Easter were described as "celebrating the capture and execution of Jesus, the devil."

That sort of thing happens all the time, and only rarely is a retraction printed; no correction ran on this one, for example, because there weren't enough angry Hindus in their demographic to merit a potentially embarassing response.

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LadyDove
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Tom-

Wow. That's pretty sad. The eye witness, in the form of the reporter, is being paraphrased by the editor. No wonder you got out.

Since you've been in the industry, what is feasible to ensure that the "truth" is printed?

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TomDavidson
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I don't think there's any obvious and unabusable legal remedy. And I'm cynical enough to believe that people will "trust" the news sources that most focus on telling them what they are already predisposed to believe, so I don't think the invisible hand of the marketplace will wind up ensuring that the most accurate or truthful media outlets survive; rather, I think that invisible hand is on the side of sensationalistic, politicized pandering.

What makes things worse, IMO, is that local news is basically a sinkhole; no one's interested in it, although everybody claims to be. In the old days -- and I'm speaking here of a phenomenon I'm too young to have witnessed, but which has been described to me -- the idea was that a paper tried to be as accurate as possible when printing its local news because it assumed that a number of its readers were already aware of the event and would make their displeasure known if it got things wrong. Now, though, most people don't bother going to town meetings -- and, of course, don't have any access at all to events of national importance -- so there's no reason for the media to fear correction.

What gives me hope, though, is the growth of the "blogosphere" -- as much as I dislike that word, and as much as I dislike most bloggers. Organizations like FAIR and Sourcewatch do a pretty good job of custodieting the custodes, so to speak, and I think the blog environment is a fairly ruthless and nearly efficient means of getting at the truth. But I'm also afraid that, in the long run, they'll prove as easy for schemers to manipulate as the mainstream media has been.

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LadyDove
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So basically, we're back to the same problem we had when the country was formed, "How do you trust a democracy to the ignorant masses?"

Regarding local news, recently I co-chaired the opening of a new library. The reporter used my quotes and attributed them to my co-chair. I didn't bother to request a correction because I decided, "What's the point. She was looking for a soundbite. It's entertainment, not reality. At least they got the name of the library right."

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Orincoro
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I disagree about the ineptitude. The reporters I've met are shockingly intelligent. Maybe the business end of things encourages sloppiness, but as a class I think reporters are pretty intelligent and they can fairly dogged in pursuing a story.

-Bob_Scopatz

The reporters you meet are not the target of my disgust, they are intelligent and apt enough to secure positions of public scrutiny, however these are the faces you see on television, the names you read in By-lines, they do not often research the whole story on their own, and in the case of a network anchor, or worse a local news anchor, they rarely even have access to the sources they quote, for lack of time, if nothing else.

The inneptitude comes with the beauracracy as this Vishnu story shows, the editor becomes the authority because he read the article (which wasn't perfect) then interpreted it poorly, and there were no consequences. This is the stupidity of the media in action: just imaging being assigned a term paper, 50 pages long, but which the proffessor says, most likely I won't read them, its just for your benefit to do them. This is the nature of the print news, the national and local news, and some of the blogosphere as well.

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Bob_Scopatz
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Orincoro,

I was primarily reacting to your estimate of 90%. My personal experiences would suggest that reporters are mostly intelligent and hard-working people who do try very hard to get the information correct. They may mess up out of unfamiliarity with the subject, though.

I think we are in agreement though, that the major screw ups are happening later in the process and are being perpetrated by people who have something other than accuracy as their primary focus in delivering the news.

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KidB
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I'm not sure I've watched enough of Fox news and ABC/CBS news to say which is more fair and balanced. It's hard for me to become very emotionally invested in that debate, since I think all TV news is mostly lousy and a waste of time. I do occasionally watch News Hour with Jim Lehrer, which I think is quite fair and balanced, and allows for lengthy debate and conversation. Also, I think Brooks and Shields are wayyyyyy more civilized and interesting than Hannity and Colmes - who I consider to be 1)blowhards and 2) morons. I also like BBC world news, for range of coverage and overall quality reportage.

If you read for 30 minutes or an hour, the amount and quality of news reporting you get from any print medium far exceeds any TV news, which is basically just "infotainment." So arguing the virtues of FOX vs. ABC or what-have-you ultimately seems a little pointless. I find them all rather awful. I don't see how any mainstream American TV news preaches "Leftism," though I do see how it is more liberal than Fox. But still, really, both are pretty awful.

Mainstream media is socially "liberal" and, I think, centrist in most other respects. Leftist? No way. I see a very big distinction between "liberal" and "leftist." Bill Clinton is a liberal. Ralph Nader is a leftist. Jerry Springer is a liberal. Noam Chomsky is a leftist. Liberals are everywhere on TV, Leftists - hardly ever. Given that the difference between a liberal and a leftist is at least as big as the difference between a mainstream conservative and a liberal, I think it's widely inaccurate to call mainstream media "leftist."

Here's some leftist media.

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Pelegius
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Chris Bridges, that is a problem with local papers. I do not think it is as serious for international papers like The Economist.
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